MAAA Wingspan - Quarterly Magazine

31 NOVEMBER WING SPAN MAAALogo. Realising the employment pathway potential of teaching aviation is what Industrial Technology teacher, Chris Paterson says will convince more schools to include it in their curriculum. “The biggest thing that a lot of schools miss out on is not recognising the employment pathway. Therefore, it has to have a clear employment route for it to be accepted, otherwise the schools just won’t take it up,” he said. Chris, who now teachers at Queensland’s Capalaba State College, originally set up aero schools at Calamvale Community College, where he implemented his own aviation projects to enable students to learn practical skills that could later be applied in aviation careers. “I was teaching students how to build everything from scratch and to design their own aircraft so that they could establish a kind of ownership over their product,” Chris continued. “We were building up to six aircraft over a three-year period from grade 10 to 12 and that was from foam construction to balsa construction to fiberglass construction.” As well as teaching at Capalaba, Chris continues to assist educators in running these aviation projects at other schools around the country. Recent projects at Capalaba have included the construction of a F-15 Depron jet to enable Year 10 students to understand fixed-wing aircraft as part of their Certificate II in engineering and Certificate III in Aviation, (Remote Pilot, Visual line of sight). “In a future project they will learn how to build and program quadcopters as part of their Certificate II in Engineering and Certificate III in Aviation,” Chris continued. “The RTO [Registered Training organisation] for the course of study are Skills Generation who has been very helpful to get the course up and running at Capalaba State College. More information can be found here Chris reiterates that to attract schools and students to take up the subject, there needs to be broader realisation that aero skills aren’t just limited to an aeromodelling hobby. “It’s about realising and focusing on the employment pathways so they fall into the hobby at the same time,” he said. “At the moment I’m using the model aircraft as the basis around Certificate II in Engineering. So, rather than students doing conventional tasks like building tables or wielding, they’re constructing aircraft and having a really great time enjoying something different. The majority of my [aeromodelling] mates who fly jets are all full-size airline pilots, so this can be a great pathway to an aviation career.” We will explore how to implement aeromodelling programs in our next edition of Wingspan. Management matters: school programs that create a pathway to employment